Prevailing opinion is that Florida State University’s football coach, Willie Taggart, shown here being greeted by FSU President John Thrasher and his wife, Jean, inherited a mess from his predecessor, Jimbo Fisher. Now the taxpayer-funded university wants to privatize its athletics department. Whew, boy. Things must really be bad if FSU wants to close the curtains. The Florida Legislature should ensure its meetings and records remain open. (AP)

The humorist Max Shulman once had a simple suggestion for any university having troubles with its football program: Just hire the Green Bay Packers as “artists in residence.” It was for laughs, but it did reflect how intercollegiate athletics had become a massive enterprise often overshadowing — and sometimes overpowering — the academic missions of its hosts.

Shulman’s point comes to mind on the news that Florida State University, emulating two of its sister schools, has created a private nonprofit corporation to manage its athletic program. In this instance, the stated purpose is to have not less control, but more of it — specifically, over the Seminole Boosters, a membership organization that has been raising and spending lots of money with minimal oversight.

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What’s of concern is that no state law requires the new Florida State University Athletic Association, Inc., to open to the public its meetings and records. The sunshine laws that govern the university trustees and most other state agencies don’t apply to independent “direct-support organizations,” such as the new corporation, or the Boosters, or similar associations at the University of Florida and the University of Central Florida.

Theoretically, athletic department records that are now open at FSU could be closed. The Legislature needs to fix that.

“It’s outrageous,” complained Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation. “It really doesn’t make much sense to me, except that they want to do everything secretly.”

FSU President John Thrasher insists secrecy is not the purpose. He has pledged that the association will keep its meetings and records open, and points to a requirement in its by-laws that “meetings of the Board of Directors or any committee shall comply with the requirements of Florida law, including laws governing public meetings, and shall provide for public comment.”

In an interview, Thrasher promised that “all the business of our organization will come in accordance with the open meeting law, all be done publicly.”

More importantly, he said the new structure will give the university more control over the Boosters.

“I didn’t have any scrutiny over the Boosters, but I do now,” he added.

We take him at his word. But Thrasher won’t be president forever and by-laws can be changed as easily as they’re adopted. Moreover, the language he cited refers to the open meeting law, but not to the statutes dealing with financial documents and other records.

The Legislature should remedy that by specifying that all direct-support organizations and athletic associations will be fully subject to the open meeting and public records laws. Thrasher, a former speaker of the Florida House and member of the Senate, said he would accept that.

The Seminole Boosters include many well-connected and prosperous alumni and other supporters who, as at many other schools, have wielded powerful influence for a long time. Members who contribute specified amounts have priority for choice football and basketball season tickets. Andy Miller, its long-time president and chief executive officer, is expected to retire next year, which may have something to do with the decision to create the new athletic association.

The new association’s bylaws declare it to be responsible for varsity athletics “for and on behalf” of FSU, including “oversight and management of the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics and Seminole Boosters, Inc.”

The by-laws specify that the FSU president will be the chairperson of a board of directors that also includes one representative each of the faculty and university trustees, a faculty member or administrator chosen by the president “who does not report directly” to him, and the chair of Seminole Boosters or a designee. The university’s athletic director, appointed by the president, is executive director of the association.

Remarks by Thrasher and David Coburn, the athletic director, have indicated that the independence of the Boosters was a chronic problem and perhaps a potential risk to FSU’s high (AA) bond rating with Standard and Poor’s.

They were reluctant to give specifics, but a clue may lie in a by-laws provision that requires an independent audit of the new association’s books and records “at least once each fiscal year” and sets compliance deadlines. An outside audit of the Boosters, completed in February 2018 and accessible online, cited “significant difficulties in obtaining sufficient, competent evidence” and faulted the Boosters’ record-keeping. “As a result,” it said, “the entire audit was delayed and extended.”

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The Boosters organization doesn’t simply raise money to give to the athletic program. It has also been the agency for building some student housing and for additions to the football stadium financed by revenue bonds.

In a venture that perhaps hasn’t raised as many eyebrows as it should, the non-profit Boosters also built a mixed-use residential-and-retail development called College Town, adjacent to the university in a City of Tallahassee redevelopment area. That is a more direct form of competition with private enterprise than on-campus bookstores and dining facilities. According to the audit, the Boosters’ outstanding debts totaled nearly $166.7 million on June 30, 2017, with more to come from phase III of College Town.

Diane Roberts, an FSU English professor and iconoclastic columnist for the online journal Florida Phoenix, describes College Town as “condo canyons … in enticing colors such as asphalt grey and dried blood red, huge parking garages, generic bars, ice cream shops, and places to get your nails done. … The architecture is brutalist, unimaginative and looming. … No doubt the Boosters are super proud of it.”

The Florida State University Athletic Association inherits serious problems with the program’s finances and with the academic performance of some FSU athletes. Athletics ran a $3 million deficit last year and needed $6 million from the Boosters to balance this year’s budget. Meanwhile, the football program ranked last in academic performance among Power Five conferences, and barely missed drawing sanctions from the NCAA on that account.

Prevailing opinion is that the new football coach, Willie Taggart, inherited a mess from his predecessor, Jimbo Fisher.

Contrary to Shulman’s long-ago whimsy, college athletes are still expected to be students in good standing. That should be the top priority at FSU, more so even than recovering from the football team’s first losing record in 37 seasons.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O’Hara, Sergio Bustos, Steve Bousquet and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.